


This Old World

by OnlySlightlyObsessed1



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, STRBB 2019 entry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 13:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19152073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnlySlightlyObsessed1/pseuds/OnlySlightlyObsessed1
Summary: Jim and Bones take their shore leave on Jim’s grandparent’s farm.





	This Old World

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Art](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/489145) by scarscarchurro.tumblr.com. 



> This fic is 100% fluff, written for scarscarchurro’s absolutely adorable art (https://scarscarchurro.tumblr.com/post/185475078976/i-was-lucky-enough-and-super-happy-to) for the 2019 Star Trek Reverse Big Bang. It’s also the first McKirk fic I’ve posted. I switch between povs a couple of times, but I think there are clear enough breaks.

There was something about real sunlight and actual morning time that Jim had missed. He woke up just after dawn, entirely on his own. Bones was completely hidden under the blanket, tucked up into Jim’s chest as much as he could be, what with being a full-grown adult man. Jim’s arm was trapped under his head, and completely numb, which was small price to pay for the privilege of waking up in a double bed to Bones’s sleep slack expression. His left arm was free. Carefully, he reached over to grab Bones’s abandoned pillow, and ever so slowly replaced it for his arm, wincing as feeling returned with pins and needles. Testament to Jim’s superb bed-sharing skills and good etiquette, Bones didn’t wake, only uttered a very tiny “mmp” noise that had Jim biting his lip so as not to laugh. 

Real shore leave, on earth, no less. 

“Computer,” he said, “window to zero percent opacity.” 

Nothing happened. It took him a second to remember that his grandparents had purposefully never installed a home computer system, and if he wanted to change the window setting, he would have to actually get up, walk over, and push the button. That was unfortunate, because he wasn’t particularly inclined to leave the bed. Instead he turned over and grabbed his personal PADD off the bedside table, feeling fond as Bones grumbled sleepily, shifting and shoving his feet into the backs of Jim’s knees. He was almost giddy, listing things off in his head that he did  _not_ have to do, like sign off on crew schedules, read through requisition forms, file transfer requests, or complete any kind of mission report. If he wanted, he could put on a movie or finish whatever book he’d been reading before the disaster at Yorktown. Although, Jim couldn’t actually remember what book that had been. He did neither, opting to navigate to his personal correspondence, where there was a summary of the medical examination Spock had sent Bones. Jim didn’t really need to look at it, but he was glad to have it all the same. Spock had also sent him a virtual album of holos, which Jim couldn’t quite appreciate on the PADD screen. Flicking through them lazily, he saw they were mostly of the various quite impressive observation points on Yorktown, pictures that five years ago might have put Bones off eating for at least four hours. The rest were of the new ship that was being built, and she was beautiful. On a personal channel Spock couldn’t send anything classified, of course, but while Jim would have been excited to get more of her specs, she was a gorgeous ship from the outside too. 

Bones rolled over and wrapped arms around him, knocking the PADD out of his hands. 

“G’mning” he hummed, and pressed a kiss to Jim’s neck, so Jim figured he could forgive him for interrupting his appreciation of their new ship. 

“Good morning to you too,” he told Bones, abandoning the PADD, but Bones had already gone back to sleep. He was not, never had been, and never would be, a morning person. 

 

His grandma was awake in the kitchen when he walked in. 

“James,” she said in greeting. 

“Morning.” 

She went back to stirring her coffee and reading her paper, her bowl of oatmeal was half finished but pushed off to the side. It looked like it had raisins in it. His grandfather loved raisins, but she hated them; so their compromise, if compromise was the right word, was that whoever got up first made the oatmeal how they liked it, and if the other didn’t like it that way they could make their own. Jim never got in the middle of them, they’d been stubbornly set in their occasionally passive aggressive ways since decades before he had come to live with them. Nothing he said had a hope of changing things. 

He grabbed his own bowl and coffee, settling down across from her where the sun poured in from the window. Something soft touched his foot and he looked down to see his old cat, Frederick Douglas, rubbing his face on Jim’s ankle. He reached a hand down to scratch his ear.

“Did the two of you sleep alright?” Jim looked up to see his grandma watching him over a sip of her coffee.

“Yeah, actually,” he said, taking care not to mumble around his oatmeal. He hadn’t expected to, and he certainly hadn’t thought Bones was going to sleep, but even in the strange absence of any engine noise they’d both dropped off pretty quickly once they’d turned off their PADDs, or he had, and Bones was still asleep, so Jim figured that said enough on its own.

“Rhubarb’s kittens are pretty big now,” she said in a rather abrupt change of topic. “Cornbread looks so much like his dad.”

“How are they all doing?”

“Oh, fine. Cobbler and Shortcake live with the neighbors now, we’ve still got Mulberry, Strudel, and Cornbread, of course, but I’ve got pictures, if you’d like to see them all together.”

“That’d be nice,” Jim said.

She nodded, and he smiled at her and took another bite of oat meal. She was still watching him with that unfamiliar expression on her face. 

“Hm?” he asked as he burnt his tongue on his own coffee. She would have clicked disapprovingly at him if he’d done that the last time he’d visited, too many years ago. The strange expression on her face intensified.

“I’m glad you came to see us,” she said finally. 

Jim looked away. They hadn’t always gotten on very well, the two of them, well, Jim and anybody. When he’d left for Starfleet, he hadn’t ever thought he’d want to come back. The animals he’d known had been sold or passed away, except for Frederick Douglas, he hadn’t had any good friends to miss, and he’d spent his whole childhood after Sam left so very apathetic towards a world that didn’t seem to have much interest in him. (Oh he’d gotten attention, all for his dad, whom he hadn’t ever met, for his mom, who was never around, for so many things he didn’t care about and had nothing at all to do with him. Even Pike had only cared to talk to him at first because he’d heard of his dad, and finally by then Jim had had something to prove.)

“Me too,” he said.

 

Despite what peopled tended to assume, McCoy had grown up in the middle of Atlanta and hadn’t set foot on anything like a real farm in his life except for once on a field trip in fourth grade. Jim, regardless of his affinity for motorcycles and classical music, had literally been raised in a barn, which McCoy still thought should be pretty obviously apparent to anyone at first glance. Although it was possible he was a bit bias, having met the guy when he was still covered in bruises and dust. Most of the time Jim had this amazing chameleon like quality to him, he just seemed to fit right in no matter where he found himself. For the moment, that was standing amid a small herd of sheep, trying his best to dig up a large weed they were uninterested in eating. 

Jim bent over to squint at the ground, why, McCoy couldn’t say, and one of the sheep took the opportunity to lip at the seam on Jim’s jeans. Jim straightened and turned to the sheep with his best Captain face on to say sternly, “Do that again and I’ll have you demoted, mister,” which was so completely incongruous with the disheveled sweaty picture he made that McCoy had to laugh. 

The sheep looked at Jim and responded with a quiet and insubordinate “Baah.”

Jim turned his Captain face on McCoy, but couldn’t hold it very long before he was grinning widely and leaning on his shovel. “You could lend a hand, y’know.”

“I’m on shore leave,” McCoy answered, affecting his most innocent face, “and someone told me I needed to rest, I don’t think suffering through physical labor counts.”

“Someone always tell  _me_  a little suffering is good for the soul.” Jim was still grinning, wide and carefree like McCoy hadn’t seen in months, before the whole debacle with Krall. 

“What? I never say that,” McCoy said, channeling as much righteous indignation as he possibly could to see Jim’s grin break into soft laughter. 

“I never said you did.” 

One of the sheep, McCoy couldn’t tell them apart, had taken to rubbing its head on Jim’s leg, and Jim was absently playing with its ear.

“Shore leave’s a good look on you,” McCoy told him. 

Once, Jim might have deflected. Today, he got a funny look on his face that seemed to be mostly a mix of fondness and exasperation. “We should take vacations more often, huh?”

“You’re the one who asked for the full five years, not me,” McCoy reminded him. Jim only laughed and set his shovel again against the persistent weed. 

 

“If you want to try and milk anyone, it should be Sassafras,” Jim said over the side of whichever sheep, ewe, he was currently milking. “She lives up to her nickname, but she’ll cooperate in the stanchion and she’s the easiest to milk, according to my grandpa.” 

Sassafras, Sassy, as Jim cooed at her, was the goat. Jim maneuvered her up to the stanchion like a professional, for all he had met her yesterday. 

“Okay, we start by wiping the udder,” Jim said. He had a wet towel in his hand and he set about wiping the goat’s udder with a vigor that McCoy though looked downright uncomfortable for the poor goat. “It helps keep the milk clean and the routine helps her let down.” The towel was noticeably dirty, and Jim set about drying her off with a new one. 

“Then we strip,” Jim snapped gloves on and sat down on beside her, grabbing the teat and squeezing twice into the towel, showing it to McCoy. “It’s to make sure the milk is healthy, it’s the right color, no lumps,” he did the other side, “now she’s ready. Will you give her some grain?”

The bowl had already been proportioned, and as he picked it up Sassy shifted her feet, straining her neck out to get at it as soon as possible. She had long floppy ears that Jim said were very elegant, and since she didn’t seem to care much about him at all once she had her face in the grain bowl, he touched one. It was surprisingly smooth. It occurred to him that overall, he had probably touched more aliens than earth animals.

“Great,” Jim told him, “put on some gloves.”

The process of milking also seemed like it should be painful, but Jim assured him it wasn’t. He held one of the teats carefully as an example, “You pinch off at the top,” Jim’s thumb and forefinger circled around, squeezing tight, “that way the milk won’t go back into the udder, then squeeze with the rest of your fingers, top down.” The motion was exaggerated for McCoy’s benefit, Jim squeezed with his palm and middle finger, then ring finger, then pinky, absurdly slowly, and a stream of milk hit the bucket. It looked relatively easy. 

It was not. McCoy was a doctor, a surgeon, and a Starfleet officer. He had a strong grip, he knew how to use his hands, gloved or ungloved, but he couldn’t seem to get the grip Jim did. When he circled his thumb and forefinger the teat was left empty and soft, and he could only make a weak and tiny stream of milk. 

“She’s pretty full,” Jim said, after watching him struggle for three attempts. “That makes it harder, keep going, you don’t need to be so gentle, the kids certainly aren’t.”

“Why do you do this by hand anyways?” McCoy asked, frustrated as again his latest effort resulted in a nothing more than a dribble. 

“Oh they have a machine they use pretty frequently,” Jim said, “but milking by hand is kind of nice.” 

Sassy was solid against him and paid him absolutely no mind as he tried again, with not much more success. 

“Hold on a sec,” Jim said, and reached over between Sassy’s legs and quickly tripled the amount of milk in the bucket, “try again now.”

It was easier to get a grip, the teat stayed full like it had for Jim and when he tightened his grip finger by finger like Jim had said the stream was strong. 

“You could have done that from the beginning,” McCoy said, trying again as he looked up to see Jim grinning at him. 

“Then you wouldn’t be able to appreciate how good I am,” Jim replied, “keep going as long as you want, I’ll finish her off.”

It was obvious from the size of her udder and the infinitely slow speed he was operating at that it would take him at least an hour. Jim had emptied the sheep in mere minutes each. His head was pressed to Sassy’s stomach and it startled him by making a loud noise. 

“You’re being very patient,” he told her. 

“She’s a good girl,” Jim said, getting up and walking over behind McCoy, “aren’t you?”

Sassy was clearly still preoccupied with her grain, and she ignored both Jim’s cooing and McCoy’s continued struggle to get the milk from her udder into the bucket. He was quite pleased to get a strong stream going until it abruptly and for no reason he could determine veered wildly away from the bucket and soaked through his shorts. Jim laughed behind him. 

“Alright, just because your family still lives like it’s the dark ages—”

“Says you, who hasn’t met a piece of machinery built after first contact he trusts an inch!”

 _That_  was a blatant lie and a horrible defamation of McCoy’s good character, thank you very much, and if he hadn’t needed to keep his eyes on his hands to aim properly at the bucket, he would have whipped his head around in order that Jim should appreciate the gravity of his eyebrows. 

“Imagine how hard I’d have to work to get you into a sickbay full of equipment from two hundred years ago, maybe then you’d appreciate me and how easy I make things for you huh?” he asked instead, and missed the bucket again. “Goddamn it.”

Jim laughed. “I do appreciate you, Bones.”

“I think the goat would appreciate you coming to take over, because at this rate it’ll take me another year to finish,” McCoy said, frowning in concentration, and managed to get two streams of milk in a row to make it into the bucket. 

Jim came up behind him grinning and nudged him to get out of the way, pulling on new gloves. 

“You did great,” he said, which was a very kind and encouraging thing to say, even if it was clearly a lie. McCoy watched as Jim settled in, head against Sassy’s stomach, using both hands he got into the same quick rhythm he’d had with the sheep, filling the bucket quickly and making the milk foam up. 

 

Bones was back on his PADD when Jim came in from the shower. The frown on his face said clearly it was work, and while Jim could sympathize, the point was that neither of them were obligated to be on duty, or even on call. He threw the towel from around his waist at Bones and it landed perfectly in his face. 

Jim grinned at Bones’s indignant squawk and dug in his luggage for some underwear. 

“What was that for?” Bones asked, throwing the towel, presumably aiming at Jim, but missing by at least a yard. 

“Stop working.”

Water droplets made his back stick to the t-shirt he pulled on, something faded so badly he couldn’t remember what it used to say, but it was soft and comfortable to sleep in. Bones’s eye-roll in response was rather lackluster as Jim climbed up the bed to lay on top of him. 

“It’s a personal project,” Bones said, but he set the PADD aside. 

“What kind of project?”

“A research proposal on microfungal life, specifically, on planets with extreme aridity and seasonal UV radiation, there was one we took surveys of, I forget how long ago, the samples were interesting.”

It was impossible not to smile at him when Bones got excited about biology, maybe because of the hour, or the privacy, or the shore leave, Bones smiled back. 

“The amount of environmental stress they can tolerate offers several avenues for preliminary studies,” Bones said, “The samples we have back on the ship have a DNA repair mechanism that’s distinct from most earth type organisms.”

Jim kept watching him. Bones raised an eyebrow.

“I just got some of the new data from our test colonies, I shared them with some of the staff at Yorktown, we’re going to see how they do if we expose them to the vacuum of space more directly.” 

Jim raised an eyebrow. Bones put a hand on his back. “Alright. I’m done now.”

“I’m sure your fungus is very interesting,” Jim said, and he was mostly being sincere, there really wasn’t call for Bones to look at him like that, but it didn’t matter in a moment because Bones was also pulling him up further for a kiss. 

 

The next day they made the short trip to the river. Jim had suggested fishing, but Bones had looked so horrified by the prospect that he’d immediately regretted it, and then even more so when Bones was still shuddering a full ten minutes later as they packed their backpacks. 

(“It’s inhumane.”

“They’re  _fish_ , Bones.”

“You stab them through the mouth with a piece of metal and then pull them out of the water to watch them flop around suffocating.”

“They have special kind of mat you can buy for the bottom of your boat that—”

“I don’t want to know, Jim.”)

It was warm, with only the slightest of breezes. The river was slow and blue-green and peaceful as always, the beach a mixture of sand and pebbles. Jim had brought one of his real paper books to read and Bones had packed his PADD which had downloaded a couple movies and about a million of various medical journals’ articles and updates he hadn’t had the chance to catch up the last time they were supposed to have shore leave. 

Mostly, they lay on a blanket in relative silence and ate snacks. Bones had insisted on bringing practically an entire crudité platter that he didn’t seem any more interested in actually finishing then Jim was, but at least they had done their part for eating vegetables. Every so often, when Bones was most absorbed in his reading, Jim would reach over and snag a carrot or a piece of cucumber, just to see how many he could eat without him noticing, so next time Bones got on his case about eating right he’d have some evidence on his side. The answer was five, because Bones looked up at the particularly loud snap the last carrot made when he bit into it.

The afternoon sun lengthened the shadows from the surrounding trees and put highlights in Bones’s hair. He wasn’t paying attention to his PADD but staring off somewhere across the river. 

“What’re you looking at?” Jim asked softly. 

Bones blinked as if he’d been zoning out, then shrugged and gestured vaguely. “The water, the waves against the rock over there.”

Jim looked out. The light caught on the water and made pretty patterns, but he couldn’t be sure which rock Bones meant. There was beginning to be more than just the breeze, which was a relief, because it was still quite hot. He looked back at Bones. “Want to take a walk?”

It only took a minute to pack their backpacks again, and they took a short detour to drop them back at the hovercar. There was a trail that wound through the trees along the bank, sometimes veering away further until the river was out of sight, but always turning back to bank again. They walked together in silence, enjoying the view and the open air and the dappled shade of the trees. The came to a lower clearer area, where they could sit and take their shoes off and stick their feet in the water while they watched the sunset. The breeze blew through Jim’s hair and Bones smoothed it down for him.

“Ready for dinner?” Bones asked, as the sunset left them in semidarkness. 

“Yeah I think so,” Jim said. They left the windows down on the ride back to the farm.

 

McCoy woke up halfway as he was moved from whatever position he had been in to some new position on the bed. Jim was always an early riser. He fell back asleep and woke up for real to an empty bed. The window was set to zero percent opacity, and the sunlight shone directly into his eyes. In defiance, he snagged Jim’s pillow and planted his face in it. There was absolutely no reason to get up, and he wasn’t going to. 

He hadn’t meant to fall back asleep but he obviously did, because he woke up a third time to Jim shaking his shoulder. 

“Bones.”

McCoy blinked.

“Bones it’s ten thirty.”

Jim’s face came more into focus. 

“I brought you coffee.”

Jim’s bright blue eyes moved out of his line of sight to be replaced by the blurry shape of a mug, which did indeed smell like coffee.

“Real cold brew, not replicated.”

The mug and Jim moved away, and McCoy exhaled loudly, but deigned to sit up. Ten thirty was a perfectly reasonable time to wake up on shore leave. 

“I said I’d help my grandma with the sheep today,” Jim told him, “they need haircuts.”

Coffee was pressed into McCoy’s hands and he sipped it as Jim went on, “If you want to join us, you’re welcome to, but otherwise I’ll see you for lunch, or maybe this evening?”

“I’ll hang around the farm,” McCoy said, his throat warmed up by the coffee. 

“Okay,” Jim said, and kissed his forehead before making his way out. 

 

Coffee was all well and good, and it was  _good_  coffee, but it wasn’t breakfast. None of Jim’s family full of morning people were still in the kitchen when McCoy made his way down, but there was a note on the fridge in Jim’s handwriting inviting him to go ahead and make whatever he might want to eat. Their eggs were real fresh chicken eggs, and they had a smattering of homegrown vegetables, which were perfect for a scramble.  One of the cats, he still hadn’t learned all their names, had been lazing in the sun by the back door. It looked up and said, “mrow”, ambling over when he opened the fridge, so he gave it a very tiny piece of cheese, and it rubbed itself around his legs the rest of the time he spent in the kitchen.

There hadn’t been any updates on Doctor Blakely’s experiments with the microfungi, but Christine had sent him some very pretty pictures from her own shore leave. He was finished eating and on his second cup of coffee at noon when Jim and his grandmother showed up, both sweaty and with wet patches on their jeans, presumably from their efforts to bathe the sheep. 

“How did you sleep? Did you get yourself some breakfast?” Jim’s grandmother asked. 

“Well, and yes, thank you ma’am,” he told her. 

He left the two of them making sandwiches to get dressed properly and head for the barn to see the cleaned sheep for himself. They stood huddled together in a lump, traumatized from the horrors of being bathed, McCoy guessed. They did look significantly cleaner and fluffier than he remembered them appearing two days ago. One of the looked up at him and bleated plaintively. 

Sassafras, the goat, trotted out of the shaded barn area right up to put her front legs up on the fence, calling a hello to him as she came. She was much more talkative than the sheep. 

“Hullo,” he said, and reached out a hand to scratch at the top of her head, she lifted her head as he did so to check first that he didn’t have anything delicious to feed her, and then settled for being pet. The sheep came closer as a tiny flock having observed Sassy’s survival coming close to him, but none of them would get close enough to be touched. 

“Bones!” Jim was calling him from the porch, or not calling him, but walking over with the remaining half of his sandwich in hand. “They’re nice and clean, aren’t they?” Jim asked when he’d gotten closer. 

“Did you give Sassy a bath too?” McCoy asked.

Jim took a bite of his sandwich and said with his mouth full, “No, no need.”

Sassy said “Mehh!” and “Maah!”, and Jim reached over to scratch under her chin. 

“You can go in with them if you want,” Jim offered, “or Sassy can have some peanuts.”

“It won’t upset them if I go in?” McCoy asked. He wasn’t exactly an expert on ruminant body language, but the sheep seemed pretty wary of him. 

“Nah they’ll deal.”

A ground squirrel popped out of a hole by the sheep, still huddled together. Jim, with his mouth full again, pointed at it and made a very disapproving incomprehensible noise. It ignored him. 

“You have something against ground squirrels?” McCoy asked. 

He had to wait while Jim finished his sandwich before getting his answer. “Their holes are a tripping hazard, great way to twist an ankle.” He slapped McCoy’s shoulder. “Help me corral the first victim for her haircut.”

Jim vaulted over the fence like nothing, starling the sheep into scattering, though Sassy seemed unaffected. McCoy followed more carefully, a good way to twist an ankle indeed. 

The sheep were quite determined not to be corralled anywhere, which Jim attributed to lingering resentment over their baths. They were fast, too; faster than McCoy had thought to anticipate, but he and Jim finally managed to chase two of them into the covered barn area, where Jim shut the gate so they’d have less room to run. 

“Who’s first?” Jim’s grandmother called from somewhere in the aisle. 

“Whoever we can catch,” Jim called back. 

The sheep stared them down. 

“Let’s try and corner them by the feeder,” Jim said, and pointed to where he wanted McCoy to stand. The sheep scurried away slightly as he moved into position. “Alright, it’s only a haircut,” Jim began cooing at them as he walked forward slowly. They edged backwards further towards the feeder and McCoy. Suddenly Jim darted forward and they both ran away from him towards McCoy, their other route of escape blocked by the feeder. To his surprise, he managed to snag one of their collars, and stumbled a bit as she pulled him after her companion until he got his feet under him. 

A second later Jim took her collar with a wide grin. “Nice catch.”

“She’s strong,” McCoy remarked.

“They are,” Jim said, “Grandma! We’ve got ‘Prise up first.”

“Prize?” McCoy asked. 

“Enterprise,” Jim said.

“Your grandparents named the sheep Enterprise?”

Jim scratched behind ‘Prise’s ear. “They asked if I had any suggestions, and she’s a beautiful lady, just like our beautiful lady. Don’t you think it fits?”

McCoy couldn’t think of an appropriate response, but luckily he didn’t have to, because Jim leaned over and kissed him before dragging on ‘Prise’s collar to get her to the gate. 

“Make sure Nascar doesn’t escape,” Jim said, gesturing to the remaining sheep. 

McCoy looked over at her, she blinked at him. “Don’t try anything,” he warned her. 

“Bhaah,” Nascar replied. 

Jim opened the gate and snuck out, tugging ‘Prise along. McCoy climbed carefully over the interior fence into the aisle behind him. 

 

When Jim had left after dinner to clean up the shears, Bones had still been eating, sitting out back by the old swing set. An hour later, Bones wasn’t on the porch or in the house, so Jim went back outside, snagging Cornbread on his way out to check the barn. The stars were out and the moon was still practically full, so he didn’t bother with a flashlight. His boots had been discarded along with his socks on the porch. They had a full three days of leave left, and Jim felt like he was finally settling into the time difference after managing to sleep through the night without waking in panic sometime around three in the morning thinking he was late for his shift. Of course, Bones was just as bad. The first night he had stayed up an extra hour reading the report Spock had forwarded from the doctor on Yorktown, and he was still completely absorbed with the reports whoever it was kept sending him on their fungi. 

As he got close to the barn door Cornbread began squirming in his arms. Jim hissed a bit as tiny claws pierced his shirt and caught on his skin. 

“Ow, what do you want cat?”

Apparently having achieved the necessary purchase, Cornbread launched himself up Jim’s chest onto his shoulder and found his perch contentedly as Jim stopped and leaned over to save the kitten from his own foolish decisions. When he seemed stable enough, Jim held on to him carefully with a one hand and straightened back up. Cornbread meowed softly. 

The barn doors were open and the motion sensor lights were off, which seemed a strange combination, but Bones was a man of strange habits, and he had taken a liking to Sassy, so it wasn’t unthinkable that he was in the barn somewhere. The lights flicked on silently when Jim walked in, and one of the ewes called out to him, he answered softly back, then called out, “Bones?”

No one replied, but only a few more steps brought him in front of the railing, and leaning up against it was Bones, serving as an obviously quite comfortable bed for Freddie, who was curled up in Bones’s lap. The two of them were asleep. Strawberry Rhubarb was laying next them, and she got up and stretched greeting Jim with an affectionate rub of her head around his ankles. 

“Hi mama,” he whispered to her, and looked back over at Bones. It was a shame he hadn’t brought anything to take a holo with, Bones, patron saint of germaphobes everywhere, asleep in the dirt by his own choice. But he also looked peaceful, and Bones almost never looked peaceful, even asleep he curled up and squished his face into the nearest blanket, pillow, or Jim’s shoulder. Sometimes he managed a quite impressive frown that Jim could never decide if he should think adorable or slightly concerning. 

Freddie lifted his head to blink at Jim. 

“Hey there,” Jim said, and acquiesced to scratch behind his ear. Freddie purred and stood up to stretch, Bones’s hand slipping off his back, and leaving Bones’s lap free. 

Jim’s weight suddenly descending on Bones’s lap combined with Jim pressing kisses into his jawline were enough to startle Bones awake. 

“Fucking hell,” Bones complained, hands coming up to grab Jim’s hips after he’d nearly toppled Jim over in the process of waking up. “Why are you like this.”

It was pretty funny, but Jim hadn’t really meant to startle him so badly, and he kissed him in apology and instead of answering. 

“Alright, get off my leg,” Bones said into his mouth, and Jim obliged, letting him straighten both legs out on the dirt floor. 

“What were you doing napping out here?” Jim asked, “Couldn’t find your way back to the house?”

Bones, ever immune to Jim’s hilarious wit, pulled him back to kiss him again. Jim certainly didn’t mind. The ground wasn’t the most comfortable place to sit, and a moment later Bones pushed him off, grumbling as he stood up and stretched. Jim dislodged a stick from the cuff of his jeans and appreciated the strip of skin that showed between the hem of Bones’s tank top and the waistband of his jeans. 

“What time is it?” Bones asked.

“Like nine,” Jim told him, but he didn’t really know. It also didn’t really matter, because they were on shore leave and neither of them had anywhere else to be, so there was no reason he couldn’t close the distance between them and find the bit of skin at Bones’s hips again. For a minute Bones just looked at him, and Jim stared at him right back, drinking in the dim light casting soft shadows on Bones’s face. 

They kissed lazily, Bones’s hands high on his rib cage, Jim’s wandering over his lower back to pull him closer as they leant against the railing. Bones hummed into his mouth and Jim let his hands wander to further mess up his hair. Maybe in retaliation, Bones shifted to lick his way down Jim’s neck, which tickled like all hell. When he squeaked, Bones came back up grinning. 

“The crop top suites you,” he said, slightly winded, much to Jim’s appreciation. 

The sun had set nearly an hour ago, but it was still in the eighties, and with Bones pressed all down his front Jim was only getting sweatier and damper, but then, so was Bones. A hand made its way under the waistband of his jeans. 

The railing was digging into his lower back, irritating and rough directly against his skin, so he distracted himself by pushing Bones’s shirt up and was rewarded when Bones crowded closer and pulled him in. It was late, Jim smelled like sheep and Bones was covered in dust from sleeping on the ground, but that just meant it was really shore leave, really on earth, and Jim was inclined to forget about how they were still in his grandparent’s barn and both really needed a shower. Then there was something soft and moving at his back and he pulled away from the railing, twisting around to see Frederick Douglas, who deserved to be called by his full and proper name on occasion, had jumped up on the railing behind him. See Jim watching him, he meowed softly. 

Frederick Douglas had been Jim’s cat before Pike recruited him for the Academy. His grandparents had thought it would be good for him, teach him some responsibility, and Jim had hated that they had been right, but had been thrilled to take care of a kitten. Bones’s hand slipped further down his pants and Freddie meowed again. 

“We’re traumatizing the poor cats, Bones,” he said.

Bones stared from Jim to Freddie and back and sighed, but obligingly removed his hands from Jim’s ass. They were, admittedly, both still gross and damp, and the barn really wasn’t anyone’s idea of a comfortable place to get handsy. 

“Do you know where Cornbread went?” 

The barn wasn’t well lit, good lighting wasn’t really the point of barns, Jim supposed, but Cornbread was a pale golden-y color and white, so he would stand out well enough. Rhubarb had disappeared too, but Jim had much greater faith in her ability to find her way back to the house.

“I didn’t see,” Bones said. 

Bones walked away from him toward the stack of hay bales, making clicking noises, Jim made his way around the railing to check by the stanchions and grain bins. Frederick Douglas followed him, rubbing along his ankles and purring. He wasn’t a young cat anymore, Jim supposed, he was probably middle aged by now.

“Found him!” Bones called, and a second later appeared with the kitten clambering to sit on his shoulder. “He’s a squirmy little thing.”

 

It wasn’t late enough to go to bed, Bones insisted, despite the fact that Jim had found him literally asleep on the ground not half an hour ago, so they sat out on the porch, Frederick Douglas curled up in Jim’s lap, Bones petting Jim’s hair instead of the cat. 

It was a clear night, and despite the fact that he could name quite a few of the constellations and more of the star systems, the sky was almost unfamiliar. It was still, for one thing. The stars were never still on the Enterprise, and he hadn’t been doing much stargazing at Yorktown. 

“I never appreciated it when I lived here,” he said, and it was true, he hadn’t. He’d spent his time acting out, ditching school, getting himself in trouble on purpose. Driven his grandmother to tears. He hadn’t given much thought to how beautiful it was.

“Hey,” Bones cupped his face with one hand, “I never appreciated Atlanta, and I still don’t.”

“What’s there to appreciate in Atlanta?” Jim shot back, and Bones glared down at him, but it was all bluster. 

There was a quiet meow from behind them and Butterfinger appeared at Bones’s side, jumping up on the couch to rub his face on his hip. Jim grinned and watched as Bones pet him, gently at first, then with increasing vigor as he found the spot behind Butter’s ear he especially liked. 

“We could go for a visit,” Jim said, more seriously. 

“To Atlanta?”

“Yeah.”

Butterfinger put a paw on Jim’s face and Bones pushed him off. 

“It’s alright,” he said, “not much to do there that can’t be done elsewhere, and I’d just as soon spend the time we have on the ground actually on the ground, not in shuttles from here to there and everywhere.”

“Does that mean I should cancel our ‘Solar System Sights’ tickets?” 

Bones picked up Butter and deposited him directly on Jim’s chest and neck. Jim couldn’t manage much of a complaint with a face full of cat neck fur, but luckily for him Butterfinger walked directly back over to his spot on the other side of Bones’s legs. They sat in silence for a while longer. 

“We should shower,” Bones said. 

 

The guest shower was not built for two people, especially not two full grown adults, and while in other circumstances it might have been nice, even distinctly desired, when Jim really did need to get himself clean and Bones kept discovering pieces of plant matter, probably hay, in his hair, it was something of a drawback. 

“Can I rinse off?” he asked. Bones was frowning ferociously at the floor while running his fingers through the back of his hair, as he had been doing for the past sixty seconds while Jim stood huddled in the corner cold and covered in soap. 

“Yeah.”

Bones moved out of the spray and dumped more shampoo into his palm. Jim’s elbow caught him in the armpit. 

“Sorry.”

Rinsed, Jim stepped out of the spray to let Bones wash his hair again. 

“Is it clean?” Bones asked, bending his head down for Jim to inspect. It was better, but there were still tiny greenish bits stuck to his scalp, like glitter made of plants. 

“I mean,” Jim began, and Bones sighed and stuck his head back under the water. “It’s mostly gone. What did you do? Rub hay in your hair?”

Deciding that both of them were sufficiently clean, he stepped into the spray against Bones, scooting him over so it washed over their shoulders.

“I was sitting by the feeders, and the goat dropped some of the leafy-ier hay on my head,” Bones told him. 

“Alfalfa,” Jim guessed. It varied in quality, there were some dustier bales sitting around, and Sassy was quite likely to drop it on someone’s head. 

“I don’t know,” Bones said. 

“Alfalfa,” Jim told him. Besides, the oat hay wasn’t green. 

Bones’s arms went around his waist and they stepped closer to each other. Despite the shower’s tiny size, it was much nicer to be pressed up against each other here where they were clean and wet and naked than covered in dirt in the barn, but it was still somewhat less than ideal, especially as Bones moved him backwards slightly and he found his back pressed against the quite shockingly cold tile of the shower wall. 

Jim’s completely situationally appropriate shriek was met by startled concern and then exasperation from where Bones had pulled back in alarm from mouthing at his neck. 

“It’s cold,” Jim muttered, “see how you would have liked it.”

“It’s not that cold,” Bones said, and turned them to Jim’s back was to the spray and his own was against the cold tile. If Bones wanted to make himself freezing in the name of making out in the shower, Jim was no one to tell him otherwise. 

Unfortunately, both of them had lived far too long on a Starship to be particularly comfortable with the massive energy waste that was heating and recycling so much water for nothing. 

“Let’s go to bed?” Jim said into Bones’s mouth, and Bones responded eagerly, if he stopped to rinse his hair once again before getting dry. 

 

In the bedroom, Strawberry Rhubarb was asleep at the foot of the bed with one of the kittens, Strudel, Jim thought, curled up next to her, fastidiously cleaning one of his hind legs. They ignored Bones and Jim laying across the bed the wrong way, even as Bones’s hand was descending between their bodies, they were, after all, cats. 

“Bones,” Jim gasped, “think of the children.”

The look on his face when he pulled back was precious all on its own, a hilarious mixture of amusement and incredulity, as he tried to figure out if Jim was being genuine. 

“I’ll move them,” Jim told him more seriously, and wriggled out from underneath him. “C’mon,” he said to Strudel and Rhubarb, who both appeared especially betrayed to be ousted from the coverlet. “You have your own beds.”

Jim opened the door for them and they padded away down the hall without any more fuss. On the bed, Bones was watching him with one of his tiny smiles. 

“See something you like?” Jim asked, climbing back up on top of him. 

“There was a dog on the first warp five ship,” Bones said.

It was Jim’s turn to pull back, slightly incredulous. “Your pillow talk sucks.”

“Think they’d let you bring your cat on board?” Bones asked as if Jim hadn’t said anything. Jim was pretty sure he was teasing, at least mostly.

“Would  _Spock_?”

Bones said, “Spock likes animals.”

“I’m sorry,” Jim said, “are we actually talking about this or are we going to have sex?”

Bones’s exasperated, or maybe amused, exhale didn’t stop Jim from leaning down to kiss him again, and with the hand that wound its way into his hair, Jim figured Bones picked door number two. “You’re demanding,” he was informed.

“You love me,” Jim muttered into his mouth, simultaneously reaching for the second pillow to shove behind Bones’s back for a better angle. 

Close up, Jim could see the rings of green and brown in his eyes, blurry as they were, and the way his cheeks scrunched up as he smiled. 

“Yeah,” he said, “I do.”


End file.
